[RG1] Blane, Lvl 110 Fire Mage

[Blane]

Who is your character?
Blane, Mage, Primarily Fire. Armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/D ... e/advanced

Who are you?
My name is Blane irl too! I'm 23 and from the UK.

To which Raid Group are you Applying?
RG1

Experience
This part of my app is going to be a little long winded... I hope you don't mind reading! (And unless stated, please assume I was playing my warrior)

So I started this adventure in August, 2007. I levelled up as a warrior (which was torture back then!) and have been playing that exact same character throughout the years. Although I have always had a soft spot for my mage, which I played a little more than the warrior in Cataclysm, I eventually ended up going back to the warrior in MoP.
This expansion though I have been playing my Mage as my main character. The mage fantasy appeals way more to me than the warrior right now. Despite that, I will most likely play both throughout the expansion, just my Mage has been, and will continue to be the main focus.

So a "little" background on my raiding experience, as stated above I began playing in mid TBC and managed to get to 70 a good few months later and decided I wanted to tank. I started doing normal dungeons, then heroics (tbc heroics were amazing!), then eventually joined a guild to raid and that's where it all started. I'd be lying if I said I could remember exactly what sort of progression I accomplished back then as I was pretty young, all I really remember is delving into Karazhan, Zul'Aman, Gruul's Lair, and then a bit later on Black Temple. Don't think I ever did Sunwell when it was current.

WotLK was when I got more into things though, after my experience in TBC I managed to join a more progressive guild, (I honestly wish I could remember the name :/) I mained a DK early on and cleared Naxx 25 pretty quickly. We were one of the top 5 guilds on the realm at that time. Towards the end of that tier and some way into Ulduar the guild started falling apart, with people leaving to join the top 1-3 guilds etc. So I decided to leave and join an old friends guild in a much less progressive, more casual environment and help them out. Honestly, even though it was a step down for me personally, this decision brought some of my fondest memories and proudest moments in my whole adventure.
So I joined them with much more experience and the first couple Ulduar raids were great. Lots of fun, killing a few bosses every night.. Until we got to Mimiron. This is where they had been stuck for weeks prior to me joining and I experienced the wipes for a few nights worth of raids. But I wanted them to progress, they were great people and I could tell the morale was draining slowly. So this is where I stepped up, I recorded our attempts and watched them over and over looking for mistakes and how we could improve, I researched the fight thoroughly and had around 2-3 pages of tactics to help us and said to the Guild Master that I could try leading it for one night and see how it goes. He agreed and let me lead for the night. We ended up killing Mimiron that same night. This was a pretty great feeling, even though in the big picture it was only a normal Mimiron kill, hearing how happy they were was worth all the effort I put in. (Might also be worth mentioning I was around 14-15 years old at that time!) However unfortunately, the guild eventually started falling apart due to people leaving the game. Afterwards I wasn't sure where to go to find those sorts of experiences again, and I also found out that the realm I'd been playing on was slowly dying aswell. So from then I only really pugged raids for the rest of WotLK.

Cataclysm was a strange one for me, I moved realms to Defias Brotherhood to get more involved in pvp. I didn't actually raid at all really up until the last raid, Dragon Soul. I joined a semi-hardcore guild who were clearing normal every week and progressing on heroics pretty slowly. This is where I mained my mage for the first time and really enjoyed playing fire! The guild was called <Midnight Order> and my mage was called Trinity. I think we ended up downing around 5/8 heroic bosses before yet again the raid team fell apart due to lack of players wanting to raid and others leaving the game.

At this point I was kind of put off of raiding because pretty much every guild I had been in since mid TBC had fell apart! So MoP was an expansion where I focused more on pvp again and went back to playing my warrior. I met a lot of great people and pvpers on Defias Brotherhood, most of which I still speak to to this day! However I did end up downing a number of Mythic bosses during Siege of Orgrimmar, including Garrosh.

WoD... WoD was the expansion where I had been the most inactive. Other than the first month or so, I just didn't enjoy the end game content. HFC was somewhat of a saviour though, as I enjoyed that raid from just pugging, and managed to clear both normal and heroic. Although I didn't even attempt Mythic at all, mainly due to not being in a raiding guild.

So that brings us to the present, Legion! I joined The Typhoon Struggle a few weeks before Legion launched, and have been raiding with them since the release of Emerald Nightmare. Up to this point I have cleared EN Mythic, 1/3 in ToV Mythic and currently 9/10 HC in Nighthold.

(I know this is a huge wall of text and more of a story than just my raiding background! However I hope it has given you a good perspective of not just my raid experience, but what sort of person I am aswell.)

Raid Role
My raid role is ranged dps. I prepare for raids by making sure I'm up to date with my class/spec. I use resources such as Altered-Time which is a mage website, wowhead, icyveins, mage discord, and lots of spreadsheets that some great people create. As for judging performance, while raiding I use Skada to analyse damage output which helps with gear and trinket choice mid-raid. Outside of raid I mainly use WarcraftLogs to analyse my performance and compare to other mages aswell as Simcraft to make sure I know which gear pieces are an upgrade, and to make sure I'm equipping the gear that maximises my damage output.

Your Spec
I'm going to focus on Fire here, as that's what I play primarily.

So a typical opener would be to prepot and precast Fireball. Then Mirror Images and Combustion at the same time, into > Phoenix Flames > Pyroblast/Fire Blast (depending on if the first Fireball crit or not) > then a rotation of Fire Blast/Phoenix Flames > Pyroblast until I get 5 stacks of Pyretic Incantation > Meteor > back to rotating Fire Blast/Phoenix Flames > Pyroblast until Combustion is over. This can obviously change depending on my talent choices, but for 7.1.5 this is what I would call a standard opener. I then just rotate Fireball and Pyroblast with Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames in between to maximise the amount of possible Pyroblasts, until about 30 seconds (this varies) before cooldowns are back up to make sure I have enough Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames charges for my next burst phase with Combustion.

As for Talent Choices, there's a couple that change depending on what sort of encounter I'm in.

15 - Conflagration is always best when there's multiple enemies, I'd only take Pyromaniac for pure single target fights.

30 - Shimmer is always used.

45 - Mirror Image and Rune of Power are close on damage output as long as you can stand in Rune for the full duration every single time it's cast. For this reason I tend to favour Mirror Image for the majority of fights, as it also lines up nicely with Combustion.

60 - Flame On is almost always used. I'd only consider Alexstrasza's Fury in an extremely cleave heavy fight (Skorpyon)

75 - The worst talent row ever made! Frenetic Speed is the only option other than some niche moments where Ring of Frost can be used to CC adds.

90 - Unstable Magic for single target and Living Bomb for cleave fights.

100 - Cinderstorm sims higher than Meteor, but similarly to not being able to stand in Rune of Power for the full duration, it doesn't take into consideration that some cinders can miss the target completely and sims as if you're getting the full damage from every single cinder. That combined with it being a pretty weird spell, I favor Meteor almost always.

Stat Priorities for Fire are pretty simple. You want as much Intellect and Crit as possible at all times. Mastery is considered the worst stat for single target, but it actually shoots up to being the best stat as soon as there's something to cleave. I often swap out pieces of gear and trinkets depending on what boss I'm fighting because of this. Haste and Versatility are pretty close, with Versatility pulling slightly ahead. (As of my current stat weights) However I will note that for Fire, stat priorities and weights always change whenever you equip a new piece of gear or two, which is why I always sim my character whenever I get an upgrade.


Off-specs and Alternative characters [How comfortable are you switching to your off-spec for a fight/raid if needed?]
Having played Fire since Legion launch, I'm not going to lie and say switching would be comfortable. However, I have played a little bit of Arcane and did get that Artifact to 35 traits before 7.1.5 incase I did need to switch. I'm confident I could pick up Arcane relatively quickly. Frost on the other hand I have not played at all this expansion (or since Cataclysm!) and the artifact isn't very high at all. So that would be a bit tougher for me to switch to.

Do you have any alts that would also be a viable option for raiding with us? Please add Armory links for other characters if so, and tell us to what degree they are/have been played.
I have an 870 warrior which has 35 traits in Protection and 29 in Fury. As mentioned before this has been my main for the majority of my time in WoW, I would not consider him to be a viable option to raid with as of right now but if you're lacking melee dps (which I highly doubt!) or even a tank, I'm willing to gear him.

Armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/D ... o/advanced

Communication [Do you have a microphone and how comfortable are you with using it during encounters if needed? Are you happy to use these forums for discussion of tactics/general scheming, and check back regularly for important information?]
Yes, I'm more than happy to use my microphone during encounters. Having done a bit of leading in the past, I'll gladly watch boss timers and call out certain mechanics if needed. And yes, I check my current guild forums daily.

Combat Logs
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 65/latest/

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 202989/10/ (OLD Emerald Nightmare Logs)


Your UI
http://i.imgur.com/mhoPfLi.png

http://i.imgur.com/hH3PsSF.png (Slightly older screenshot, but it shows more elements of the UI. Only made small changes since then.)


Guild History
So as mentioned I joined The Typhoon Struggle a few weeks prior to Legion launching and have been raiding with them throughout Legion so far. However, without going into too much detail, there are a few issues that are making the raiding experience unpleasant for me. I'm happy to talk more about this in-game, but not on a public forum. On a more positive note, I want to join TRC because I'm looking to join a guild that has been around for a long time and has a good history, while also being competitive by clearing all Mythic content while it's current. Judging by your guild history, you're a great choice.

Raid availability [Can you generally make all of our raiding days/times, or are there any difficulties with this? Our current raid schedule is found here.]
Yes, you raid the exact same time and days as The Typhoon Struggle, I've had no issues with making raids here, so I have no worries about making your raids.

References
I've known about your guild through many years of playing on Defias and while I can't claim to know anyone in the guild directly, many of your names are familiar to me. I have also done a fair few dungeons with some of your members from time to time and always had positive experiences.

About you
So firstly and mainly, I'm a huge gamer. I love pretty much all types of games. Ranging from rpgs, sports games/simulators, racing games, fps games. I'd say the only type of game I've never been attracted to is MOBAs, such as LoL and HotS etc. However my main love has always been story driven games, especially rpgs. I've played so many ranging from the Mass Effect trilogy, both KOTORs (Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic) from a looong time ago, The Witcher games etc.

Outside of gaming, I'm into a few different sports, mainly football although I do like to play tennis and golf from time to time. I also love music, I'm pretty young (getting too old nowadays though!) so I do like some edm music, mainly drum and bass. But I also really enjoy theatrical instrumentals such as music from Lord of the Rings etc.

Miscellaneous
Nothing else to say other than thank you for taking the time to read my rather long app and I look forward to hearing from you in the near future. :]

[Bowick]

Heya! Glad to see your application here.
Give us a very brief time to review and we'll get back to you ASAP.
Thanks!

[Bowick]

<Accepted for trial!>

[Netzach]

Trial passed, welcome to RG1 as a full member. Congratulations!

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